Theodore Parker Quotes
There is what I call the American idea. I so name it, because it seems to me to lie at the basis of all our truly original, distinctive, and American institutions. It is itself a complex idea, composed of three subordinate and more simple ideas, namely: The idea that all men have unalienable rights; that in respect thereof, all men are created equal; and that government is to be established and sustained for the purpose of giving every man an opportunity for the enjoyment and development of all these unalienable rights. This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government after the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake, I will call it the idea of Freedom.
Theodore Parker, 1810-1860, Clergyman & Abolitionist The American Idea, Speech, New England Anti-Slavery Convention, Boston, May 29, 1850
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Cochrane became the Admiral in Chief of 2 Different South American Nations—Peru and Brazil—fighting for their independence. Incredibly enough, he was able to form idealistic freedom fighters with no naval experience into navies which defeated both the Spanish and Portuguese fleets at a time when those countries had world class navies. His achievements on behalf of the South Americans are often regarded as the most remarkable naval achievements in history.
The 1964 Civil Rights Bill had as one of its greatest supporters Republican Minority Leader, Senator Everett Dirksen. His reasoning was:. The first sentence was Dirksen quoting Victor Hugo.
He was running on the Bull Moose Party ticket. The “square deal” phrase was a major slogan of the campaign and had first been used earlier in 1903 and 1905. See {32586} and {32766}. The Smithsonian Institution has even preserved the audio of this quotation. See their website.
Most politicians at the time agreed with this statement. In the next 25 years, the economic system grew less fair and when government officials tried to come up with remedies, they sublimated fairness, to economic recovery, and America went through a phase where fairness was far less important then it traditionally had been.
He had written this at the request of Joan van der Capellen, the Dutch revolutionist, to have a Christian theological justification for revolution against the then Dutch monarchy. See {639741} and {639742}.
Theodore Parker was an American transcendentalist and reforming minister of the Unitarian church. A reformer and abolitionist, his words and popular quotations would later inspire speeches by Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.
